


some love was made for the lights

by thequeenofokay



Category: Quantico (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-09 12:08:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6906043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequeenofokay/pseuds/thequeenofokay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shelby didn’t come to Quantico to find her soulmate. She spent too much time back home in Georgia thinking about soulmates. She came to Quantico to become an FBI agent.</p><p>// shaleb soulmates au.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i

**Author's Note:**

> \+ it's the night before my final history exam. so a) my priorities are clearly spot on and b) please forgive any mistakes.
> 
> \+ anyway this is the standard cliche soulmates au!! bc every ship needs one yknow. its gonna be multichap (so prepare urself for slow updates), and it'll follow a similar sorta pattern to the show itself.
> 
> \+ title from "slow it down" by the lumineers.

Shelby didn’t come to Quantico to find her soulmate. She spent too much time back home in Georgia thinking about soulmates. She came to Quantico to become an FBI agent.

Her new roommate seems nice, and certainly enthusiastic. And she can do exceptional hospital corners, which Shelby is going to have to learn if she wants to survive twenty weeks of college-style dorm life again.

Alex is leaning against the door of their bathroom, having showered after what looked like it had been a gruelling session of physical training. ‘I was going to the library to do some more research on our assignments. You coming with?’ she asks.

‘Sure,’ Shelby says.

‘So,’ Alex says, as they walk down the hall. ‘How’s it going finding anything on Caleb?’

‘Ugh,’ Shelby sighs. ‘I’ve been looking into him all day and he’s a _total_ golden boy. His parents were both high-ranking agents, and the director himself wrote his letter of recommendation. He’s got to be hiding _something_ , but god knows what.’

‘Oh – you weren’t there,’ Alex says, and her voice drops to a conspiratory stage whisper. ‘He hardly survived PT. He kept making excuses, like that he smoked. I don’t know how he passed the physicals. So it looks like your golden boy might only be gold plated,’ she says, shrugging.

‘What?’ Shelby frowns. ‘Did he think he could just coast through on his looks?’

‘I’m not coasting on anything, Taylor Swift,’ he says, smirking down at her, and his shoulder brushes hers as he passes.

The pain in her side is immediate and she stops in her tracks.

‘Shelby?’ Alex’s hand is on her shoulder, concerned. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah,’ she says, stepping backwards. ‘I just have to grab something from our room. I’ll see you in a minute.’

She almost sprints for her room, but the pain is already fading by the time she’s in front of the bathroom mirror.

She pulls up her shirt, twisting so she can see the skin of her side, just beneath her bra. _Caleb_. The word is still red like she’s been burned, but she knows it will fade down to a scar within a few days.

She can’t believe this. _Caleb_ is her soulmate? Caleb, with his constant snarky jokes and sarcastic comments and… not inconsiderable looks. He’s not exactly who she imagined being destined for.

She hears the door to their dorm open and pulls her shirt back down sharply. Alex has dropped her assignment on her bed to look over it, but she looks up as Shelby exits the bathroom.

‘How’s it going?’ she asks. ‘Only a couple hours to go until we present what we found on each other.’

‘Okay, I guess.’ Shelby shrugs. ‘Listen – what do you think about the whole soulmates thing?’

‘Oh.’ Alex shakes her head. ‘No, I don’t buy into that. I mean – have you seen the stats? Only ten percent of people ever even meet their soulmate, and even less of them stay together. And anyway, I don’t think some kind of providential tattoo can choose who I’m supposed to be with, you know?’

‘Yeah,’ Shelby says, doing her best to make it sound convincing. ‘I know what you mean.’

‘Anyway, why do you ask?’

‘Just wondering,’ Shelby says. It doesn’t seem right to tell Alex, not until she’s spoken to Caleb about their _situation_ , at least.

 

*

 

She finds him sitting by the pool. It’s dark, but she thinks he might be crying. He looks up as she sits down beside him, her arms wrapped round her knees. ‘We should probably talk,’ she says.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘I’m going to be kicked out anyway. You don’t have to worry.’

Shelby frowns. She doesn’t understand, but it feels like a kick in the gut. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Quantico has a no sleeping together policy,’ he says. He’s staring resolutely down at the water in front of them, not looking at her. ‘And all soulmates have to be reported so that their case can be reviewed. It’s never really happened before, though.’

‘Oh,’ she says. This isn’t really what she meant by talking. She can’t help but feel horribly disappointed. ‘You don’t know they’ll kick you out.’

‘Shelby,’ he says, almost laughing. ‘A man shot himself in front of me. I barely passed my exams to get in in the first place. My parents had to pull major strings.’

‘What happened with Eric wasn’t your fault,’ she insists. ‘Whatever it was that he was hiding, no one knew about it.’

He shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t matter. No one likes me here, anyway. I don’t know why you’re being so nice to me.’

‘I’m your soulmate,’ she says.

He looks across at her. ‘And I’ve just been a jerk to you.’

She concedes with a little nod. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Maybe it’s also because… I know what it’s like to be discounted.’ She lets silence settle over them for a few minutes. It’s surprisingly nice – she’s not sure he knew how to do quiet.

Before she stands to leave, she turns to him again. ‘For the record,’ she says, ‘I think they’d be wrong to kick you out.’

 

*

 

They kick him out anyway.

 

* * *

 

_July, eight months later._

 

Shelby closes her eyes. Just five minutes more, then she’ll get up. She can hear Caleb making coffee in the kitchen of her New York home that they’ve been staying in since they were assigned to the city three weeks ago.

She hears the phone ring, but she can’t hear what he’s saying as he picks up. All she feels is the sudden jolt of shock that’s coming from him and whatever it is he heard on the other end of the line.

She pushes herself straight out of bed. By the time she’s reached the kitchen, he’s put the phone down, but she can still feel his disbelief and panic, even. ‘What’s happened?’ she asks.

‘There’s been an attack on Grand Central,’ he says.

‘Oh god.’ Her hand covers her mouth as what he’s saying settles in. ‘You mean a bombing?’

He nods. ‘They’re setting up an Emergency Command Centre and they want us in right away.’

‘Right,’ she says. She twists the ring on her finger nervously. ‘I’ll just go get dressed. And – could you put my coffee in one of the to-go mugs?’

He nods. ‘Of course.’


	2. ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \+ can u believe its been two years and i can't even write a 2k word chapter :/

‘You’ve been moping all week,’ Alex says, nudging Shelby’s shoulder as they walk towards their classroom. She’s not exactly wrong. Shelby has been trying to ignore the hollow feeling in her chest all week.

‘She’s just missing her golden boy,’ Nimah says.

Shelby scoffs. ‘No,’ she says, ‘absolutely not. No way. I’m actually enjoying the quiet since Caleb has been gone.’

‘Sure,’ Alex says, and Shelby can tell she doesn’t believe her.

‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘there’s a no hook-up at Quantico – which you already broke, by the way Alex.’

‘Firstly, that was a onetime thing, and I didn’t even know who he was. And _secondly_ ,’ Alex says, ‘you are deflecting. I’m not that stupid. And I never said anything about hooking up with him, Shelby, did I?’

Shelby sighs and wrinkles her nose, but she can’t come up with a reasonable retort by the time they get to class.

She slides into her seat beside Alex. Liam’s lesson is on preventing terrorist attacks from ever happening, but she can’t keep her focus on his words. There’s an odd feeling in her head – a sort of uncomfortable sense of awareness, like there’s someone standing just out of sight.

And then Caleb walks in with the other analysts.

Her first thought is that he should have told her he was coming back. She tells herself that’s silly – they weren’t friends. They weren’t really anything to each other, except soulmates. Her second thought, as the empty feeling in her chest begins to ebb, is that whether she’d really realised it or not, she’d definitely missed him.

 

*

 

She drops a pile of garbage on the desk in front of him, and his nose wrinkles in a way that she doesn’t want to admit is cute. ‘Are we going to talk?’ she asks.

‘Sure,’ he says. He’s scrolling through his phone, not looking up at her. She waits for him to say something else, but he just continues to scroll like she’s not there.

‘You’re back,’ she says. ‘Even after a NAT shot himself in front of you.’

‘Mm,’ he agrees. ‘Lucky they didn’t let that time bomb in, isn’t it?’

She stares. She doesn’t know what she’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this – a return to deflecting everything with snarky comments. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Really, Caleb?’

He shrugs, finally looking up at her. ‘Yeah.’

There’s an uncomfortable feeling in her chest. She knows he’s lying, but she can’t explain how. She just shakes her head instead. ‘Whatever.’

‘If you don’t mind,’ he says, ‘I’m trying to work here.’

‘You’re—’ she leans across the desk to peer at his phone, ‘—you’re looking at dog pictures!’ He smirks. She wants to be angry at his childish attitude, but all she can muster is a kind of sad frustration. How is _this_ her soulmate – an immature man who refuses to change? ‘Maybe it’s a good thing they wouldn’t let you back to NAT,’ she says.

‘At least I’m not missing evidence,’ he retorts. There’s an offended note to his voice, and he’s gone back to staring at his phone. Great.

‘What? I’m not missing evidence.’

He points over her shoulder, without looking up, at a copy of _The Catcher in the Rye_ , and with a final sigh she turns away from him, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of being right.

 

*

 

He spends most of the rest of the exercise giving her one-word answers at best. He jokes with Brandon and Natalie and his fellow analysts like nothing has changed. The only change is that he refuses to try to infuriate her. She knows she should be glad; she doesn’t need him acting like a schoolboy pulling her pigtails in the playground.

Still, it feels wrong. Every moment he withdraws, she feels the hollow feeling return in her chest.

‘Haas,’ she hears Liam call after him as the NATs move to pick a threat, ‘analysts stay at their desks.’ His shame settles over her like it’s her own, and she understands.

 

*

 

‘Caleb, we’re soulmates. You can’t just ignore me.’

He looks up. ‘You can knock, you know,’ he says.

‘Sorry.’ She stands in the doorway of his dorm, playing with her necklace. ‘Do you mind if I come in?’

‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Make yourself comfortable.’

She perches a little awkwardly on the edge of his bed, but there’s nowhere else for her to sit. ‘What do you want?’ she asks.

‘What do you mean?’ he asks.

‘What do you want?’ she repeats. ‘From us, I mean. You can’t just pretend there’s nothing between us.’

‘I…’ he begins, ‘I didn’t think you’d want anything to do with me. I’m a screw-up. My parents knew it. They were done with me when I got kicked out. It was only my sister calling in a favour that got me back in.’

Shelby ducks her head. She can see where this line of self-deprecation is heading, and she’s just not sure she wants to hear his conclusion. ‘Okay,’ she says.

‘Soulmates are a liability,’ he continues. ‘Especially when it’s me. I… I wouldn’t put your career at risk. I couldn’t do that to you.’

She hugs her knees. She knows everything that he’s saying makes sense. There’s a reason relationships are discouraged between trainees, and a reason that the FBI asks for your soulmate status when you apply. She doesn’t have to like it, though, and she’s never been one to just sit back and accept anything. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘How about friends? And we can just… see where this goes.’

He looks for a moment like he might protest, and tell her it’s too risky, someone might suspect that there’s something more between them, but he just smiles and shakes his head. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Friends sounds good.’

 

* * *

 

**Nine months later**

 

*

 

‘You really think Alex could have done this?’ Shelby asks. They’re gathered round a desk in the Emergency Command Centre, surrounded by noise as agents try to deal with the chaos in the wake of the bombing.

‘You know what she’s capable of,’ Liam says, but Shelby’s not sure exactly what he means. Sure, they have their differences and they’re no longer friends, but she can’t imagine Alex to be capable of this sort of destruction. ‘And now she’s on the run,’ he continues. ‘Apprehending her is the number one priority. Vasquez, take a team, get to Parrish’s apartment and see what you can find. Anything that gives us an idea where she might be headed.’

He turns to Shelby and Caleb. ‘Haas, your father is on his way from D.C., so technically you shouldn’t be working this. There are protocols in place which prohibit family from working together.’

Caleb scoffs. Shelby can feel the prickle of annoyance radiating off him at the mention of his father. ‘I think the terrorist on the loose trumps policy,’ he says. ‘Give me command of the DITU op.’

Liam levels him with a look. ‘Really?’

‘You know I’m qualified.’ He’s standoffish, hands dug in his pockets. Shelby stretches her awareness towards him, trying to find the reason he’s so set on being given charge of DITU, but she just hits a wall of _worrypridemistrust_ rather than any kind of solid answer. ‘I’ve proved that plenty since I left Quantico.’

‘I just thought you and Agent Wyatt’s… unique skill set would be more useful out in the field,’ Liam says.

‘With respect, sir,’ Shelby says. ‘We don’t have to be together all the time for our connection to be beneficial.’

He looks sceptical but concedes with a nod. ‘Fine. Haas, you’re here at the command centre. Wyatt, you’re with Vasquez for now.’

 

*

 

Shelby is dozen paces behind Natalie as they climb the fire escape after Alex. ‘Try to get a good shot!’ Natalie across her shoulder as they reach the rooftops.

Shelby calls back a confirmation. She stops at a ledge between two buildings, positioning the rifle in the direction the other two women are running. She tries to line Alex up between her crosshairs, but as she and Natalie tussle it’s impossible to get a clear aim.

‘Someone’s framing me!’ she hears Alex call. There’s desperation in her old dormmate’s voice, but whether it’s because she’s telling the truth or simply unwilling to face justice, Shelby can’t be sure. She sees Natalie hesitate too, and another struggle later Alex has her on the ground.

Shelby thinks she sees Alex catch a glimpse of her across the roofs, and then she’s disappeared down a stairwell.

 

*

 

Shelby slides in next to Caleb as they’re briefed again. She hasn’t explained everything yet – seeing Alex and the plans for a bomb at her apartment – but she doesn’t need to. He’s felt it all, at least.

‘Agent Booth is awake, and he has confirmed that Parrish was his attacker,’ Liam says. Shelby sees Natalie let out a breath in relief at his words. ‘We’re releasing her name to the press.’

Shelby supposes that should erase any doubts that Alex is behind this. It still doesn’t quite piece together in her mind, but it must be the truth. She shared a dorm with a terrorist for weeks at Quantico. She was best friends with a killer. She shared secrets with a bomber.

She feels Caleb catch onto her line of thought. His hand squeezes her arm in comfort and she looks up, grateful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \+ i'll see yall in another two years for chapter 3!! we should by done by 2038 :)

**Author's Note:**

> \+ [tumblr](http://theshelbywyatt.tumblr.com) / [twitter](http://twitter.com/karapalamas)


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